“Dell’s moves to lower prices, hire more understandable customer service reps and stop product fires do not appear to be helping its immediate fortunes,” Ashlee Vance reports for The Register.

“Think Equity analyst Eric Ross warned today that channel checks in Asia show Dell’s PC sales ‘declining rapidly below expectations.’ Dell will likely struggle to correct the sales slip before the end of its third quarter, according to the analyst, and now faces a ‘near-impossible’ situation,” Vance reports. “The hardware maker may well need to issue yet another mid-quarter revenue warning – a process that’s becoming a tradition in Round Rock.”

“Dell’s management has been doing everything it can think of to try and revive the company’s fortunes. Sadly for investors, ‘everything’ doesn’t include all that much. Dell has moved to cut prices, eliminate rebates and hire more customer service representatives, thinking this will restore its image as a decent, low-cost computer supplier,” Vance reports. “In the meantime, exploding laptops and ongoing customer support horror stories undermine Dell’s ‘we’re better now’ pitch.”

MacDailyNews Note: Except for Apple, that is. From the info we have, Mac sales aren’t struggling.

The AP continues, “We have heard PC makers believe 2H06 is much flatter than they previously expected…” Ross wrote in a note to investors… Among Ross’ laundry list of problems faced by Round Rock, Texas-based Dell is a “management team clearly in disarray with factions fighting for power,” as well as a loss of key employees to major competitors.”

There’s a significant difference between being good value and being just plain cheap. Dell have gone so bargain basement that not only is it becoming harder to lower the prices any further but even if they do it potentially serves to just worsen their image as making low-end stuff. Dell tried to sell computers to everyone but in doing so compromised themselves.